


Can We Talk About Something Else?

by MaybeAMako



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Tokyo Lift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeAMako/pseuds/MaybeAMako
Summary: A short fic about Seraph's memories of its first time meeting Concrete.
Relationships: Freemium Seraph & Concrete Mandible
Kudos: 6





	Can We Talk About Something Else?

**Author's Note:**

> Characters are depicted using my own interpretations. Visuals of these interpretations are present on my twitter (@MaybeAMako).

There was a figure in the grass.  
Tall, reddish autumn grasses, blades lit like licks of fire in the rosy first light of morning crushed and folded beneath a heavy, fallen shape. One clifflike shoulder of its awkward silhouette had pressed and dug into the soft dirt; almost apologetically, the figure lay on its side, the area of damage its weight inflicted on the forest floor minimized to a line and the single point of its folded hands. A crisping leaf had impaled itself on a vicious, uncurving horn; the observer, though it wished to, did not reach to remove the invading detritus. It did not want to wake the sleeper.  
When one’s mind is free of the burden and hulk of childhood’s great, looming bulk, observation gains prevalence. It sits at the forefront; some inherent knowledge of absence, some craving for the memory of youth, lingers quiet and undetected in the back of that mind. It urges on the flicking gaze of the eyes intrigued and tentative reach of the hand inspired. Fascination; a craving for knowledge, for awareness, for depth beyond what is currently known. Fascination sat atop leaf litter not ten feet away, folded in some mimicry of cross-leggedness. It sat perfectly still.  
This is what it remembers of that moment, for though its memory nears perfect, it seldom observed itself, that day; there was something far more interesting that hoarded its attention. On occasion, it will observe that subject of interest, comparing with vague curiosity its differences now to when it first was found. When it found it. It itself.

“Helloo? Earth to Seraph?”  
The signs of Seraph’s attention returning to the present are subtle- it has no pupils to direct or lids to blink, and it does not stir or take a breath at the call of its name. But the concrete has learned to read this lack of expression, for better or for worse, over time. “Get it?” they add in the silence before Seraph responds- “Because you’re from the-”  
“Yes.”  
It’s a neutral voice. It takes on only the subtle forms of accent necessary for language to be properly conveyed, a fact often only noticed by those with regional accents that differ from its own. It’s a synthesized voice- or so one would assume- and bears the telltale marks of nonorganic sound. In the seconds that follow, Concrete’s expression flattens.  
“So, killjoy. What’s on your mind?”  
This time, Seraph looks up- up and over to the hulking silhouette of the entity it found in the grass that day. “You,” it admits, neutral of the implications of such a remark- “I was thinking of the day we met.”  
Concrete’s face, all the more human, shifts and distorts with emotion and response in ways Seraph’s never will. Just then, it shows surprise- a blink, a raise of eyebrows, a curious flash of a frown.  
“... Huh.” A pause they use to shift their feet almost awkwardly on the floor, scuffing quietly against the carpet. A heavy hand leans them on the arm of a couch nearby. “I guess I never really asked you what you remember about all that.”  
Seraph, ever distant from the subtleties of understood communication, doesn’t respond until Concrete has added an expectant, “Well?”  
“Yes?”  
“What do you remember?”  
“About meeting you?”  
“Yes, about meeting me.”

It was smaller, then. But with no basis of comparison, this isn’t what it noticed. It noticed the way its body was shaped by thinly linked amalgams; the arc of the chest and the concavity of waist, the spiking juts of hips and shoulders against the thin stone branches of the joints themselves. Stone, it noticed; a dark, paving stone, an interposition of concrete over the topography of mountains and cliffs- or a mimicry of them, anyway. It had eyes; closed, but present; and a mouth, interrupted by ill-fitting teeth that protruded both upward and down. Its shape stirred with breath the observer wondered how it needed, the movement shifting clinging dirt from the surface of the gem between its horns and the seams between segments of the arc that followed from behind its head. 

“You were smaller,” it comments. “Then you are now. Less angular. Was it some strange coincidence you had the proportions of a child?”  
“Don’t ask me.”

When their eyes had finally opened, the sun was past its peak, shadows lengthening in the passing afternoon. The observer had not moved until that point, and the figure’s untrained eye did not catch the tiny tilt of its head in apt curiosity. A flash of color; the figure’s eyes were a bright and swirling amber.

“Your eyes were gold.”  
“That’s what you remember?”  
“They caught the light. It made you squint.”  
“Well, yeah. I was opening my eyes for the first time.”  
“You think.”  
“... I think.”

It took the figure a moment to notice the observer’s presence. It was another part of the landscape; still, stirred only by wind, a protrusion from the leaves and grass not dissimilar to the waking eye to a tree lit oddly by the sun.

“How long were you sitting there?”  
“It was barely light when I found you. Morning.”  
“Wasn’t it afternoon when I woke up?”  
“It was.”  
“You were there all day?”  
“... I suppose so.”  
“Your inability to experience boredom will never cease to amaze me.”  
“Your inability to avoid chasing every opportunity for competition and entertainment will never cease to fascinate me.”  
“Ha ha.” A sour sort of look on their face. A moment’s pause.  
“You overlooked me, at first,” Seraph comments, tone colored by remembrance.   
“Yeah. It was bright.”  
“What made you notice me?”   
Concrete hesitates. “... I guess I never really thought about it,” they admit. “You were the wrong color, I think.”  
“Wrong?”  
“Everything else was browns and greens and oranges. You weren’t.”  
“I didn’t fit.”  
“Yeah.” A pause. “You don’t fit in much of anywhere, to be fair.”  
“Neither do you.”  
“Point.”

Leaves crunched beneath fingers that curled through them into the dirt as it pushed itself upright, starting and swatting instinctively at the dirt that fell from on top of their shoulder and into their face. They looked around, all the while gathering their legs beneath them as if readying themselves- not to stand, but to spring, if some danger were to appear. 

“You weren’t very trusting.”  
“Can you blame me?”  
“No.”  
“It’s not like I jumped you.”  
“You looked ready to.”  
“Yeah, sure, but I didn’t.”  
“... That is true.”

Their eyes turned wider by the moment, flicks of glances more frantic. They did not recognize their surroundings- the observer pondered what, if anything, they knew of their circumstance, and wondered how to ask. 

There’s a long pause. Hesitation is strange, in Seraph- more consideration than anything, weighing of knowledge against the facts and traditions of implication and culture it has committed to memory.  
“You were afraid,” it says, eventually- but its tone is curious, tentative, as if this is a subject that it did not often approach.  
Concrete’s pause is equally long, if not longer. Their feet shift, floorboards creaking beneath the carpet. They turn away, as if distracted or remembering something they’d intended to be doing.  
“Can we talk about something else?”


End file.
